


Notes for 'The Arch'

by FabulaRasa



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is for those hard-core meta-readers out there. It's some historical explanation I had way too much fun compiling, about the piece I wrote called "The Arch," so you'll want to read that first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Notes for 'The Arch'

** Hopelessly Pretentious Meta Below With Which I Had Too Much Fun ‎And Which I Really Hope People Read **

 

**Historical Notes and a word about dates**

I have given two dates at the beginning of the first three sections: one in our standard ‎modern notation (Before the Common Era, Common Era), and one in Roman notation. ‎BCE and CE replace the older B.C./A.D. notation, which I have rejected both because it ‎is no longer scholarly custom to use them and because they reflect a certain narrow ‎chauvinism of historical viewpoint. Almost all historians now speak of "the common era" ‎rather than "the year of our Lord," though to those who object that this is an erasure of ‎Christianity, I would say that the hinge point continues to be the birth of Christ in both ‎notations.‎

The Roman notation was calculated from the founding of the city of Rome in what we ‎would call 776 BCE and they called the year one. "Ab Urbe Condita" means, roughly, ‎‎"from the founding of the city," and Romans typically abbreviated this as A.U.C.‎

**Corioli**  
In the early years of its history, Rome was not the centre of a world empire that stretched ‎from Britain to the Middle East. She was simply the newest and most powerful among ‎the competing city-states of central Italy. Rome began by subjugating these older peoples ‎of the Italian peninsula and razing or re-appropriating their cities.‎

One such people were the Volscians, whose chief city of Corioli was attacked and laid ‎waste by Gnaeus Marcius, one of Rome's most brilliant and aggressive generals. He was ‎granted the honorary title "Coriolanus" by the Roman Senate for his actions against the ‎Volscians, and it is as Coriolanus that he is known today, particularly because of the ‎Shakespeare play that bears his name.‎

Corioli was destroyed so utterly that by the time of Pliny four hundred years later its true ‎location was no longer even known, and it had passed into legend as one of the lost cities ‎of Latium, the area round about Rome. Historians' best guesses put it between the river ‎Astura and the Alban hills.‎

As for Coriolanus, the day of his greatest triumph was also the beginning of his downfall. ‎Shortly after his victorious return to Rome, he fell into disfavour with the Senate. In ‎indignation, he returned to the Volscians, and this time offered his services fighting for ‎them against Rome. He marched against Rome at the head of the Volscian forces, but ‎had a change of heart as soon as he besieged the city, and retreated. Upon his return to ‎Latium, the Volscian leader Aufidius had him killed for his betrayal.‎

Valerius refers to Coriolanus as "Dominus," which is a common title of respect meaning ‎‎"lord."‎

**Rome**  
The "Augustus" in this section is not Augustus Caesar of the first century CE, but ‎Constantine the Great, emperor from 305 – 337 CE. Augustus was a title granted to the ‎emperor by the (completely figurehead) Senate, and means "revered one," more or less. ‎Constantine was a remarkable man. The son of a Roman commander and an innkeeper's ‎daughter, he was born in Serbia and fought under Diocletian and Galerius, emperors of ‎the eastern half of the Roman empire, which in those days had become so large and ‎unwieldy that it was almost impossible for one person to effectively administer the state. ‎Constantine's father Contantius was eventually made emperor of the West, and ‎Constantine joined his father's court, though he had not seen him for many years and ‎indeed, historians speculate, hated him for his repudiation of his base-born mother. On ‎Constantius's death, Constantine was hailed as Caesar by his troops on the German ‎frontier, where he had been stationed for some time. Battling against a host of other ‎claimants, Constantine eventually annihilated all of them and re-united the Roman empire ‎into a single formidable nation, ruled by one powerful man.‎

In 330, Constantine moved the capital of his empire to a small city on the narrow land ‎bridge connecting Europe with Asia, known to the Greeks as Byzantium. Rome had long ‎since ceased to be an effective governing center for an empire whose primary wealth and ‎greatest population was concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean, and the choice of ‎Byzantium as the site for a new city was strategically inspired. On Monday, the 11th of ‎May in the year 330 CE, 1106 AUC, the new city of Constantinople was dedicated, in ‎magnificent splendour and pageantry. Most remarkable of all, this dedication took place ‎in a Christian church, at the offering of High Mass, for Constantine, among his many ‎other firsts, was the first Christian Roman emperor. He ended the persecution of ‎Christians and proclaimed religious toleration to all. ‎

Constantine has been venerated as a saint from shortly after his death, as has his mother, ‎St. Helena, who spent the last years of her life on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, searching ‎for the True Cross and assorted other relics, who founded and built the Church of the ‎Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and is the patron saint of gullible tourists.‎

 

**Constantinople**  
Contrary to what most primary school history texts teach, the Roman Empire fell not in ‎‎476 CE but almost a thousand years later, in 1453 CE. The city Constantine founded ‎stood on the banks of the Bosporus for over a millennium. Its rulers continued to style ‎themselves the Roman emperors, and referred to their empire as the Roman Empire, ‎though in the seventh century the official language of the empire changed from Latin to ‎Greek. As the Turks and other invaders pressed in on them from the east, more and more ‎of their empire eventually crumbled beneath the Seljuk and later the Ottoman Turks. ‎Western Christian kings and popes would periodically wring their hands and send troops ‎that did more harm than good, but nothing could stop the inexorable onslaught of the ‎Ottoman Turks. The last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, fought on the land walls with ‎his men, but history does not record where his body lies. In a fury at being denied ‎desecration of his body, Sultan Mehmet, Constantinople's conqueror, searched from one ‎end of the city to the other for the emperor's body. All that was ever found were his ‎purple boots, in a pile of bodies on the section of wall nearest the breach, where he had ‎last been seen in the company of his cousin, Theophilus Palaeologus.‎

On the 28th of May, 1453 CE, the "queen of cities" fell for the first time to a conqueror. ‎The orgy of destruction was unlike anything the world had ever known. Historian John ‎Julius Norwich has said it best:‎

‎"By noon the streets were running red with blood. Houses were ransacked, women and ‎children raped or impaled, churches razed, icons wrenched from their golden frames, ‎books ripped from their silver bindings. The Imperial Palace at Blachernae was left an ‎empty shell. In the church of the Holy Saviour in Chora the mosaics and frescos were ‎miraculously spared, but the Empire's holiest icon, the Virgin Hodegetria, said to have ‎been painted by St. Luke himself, was hacked into four pieces and destroyed. The most ‎hideous scenes of all, however, were enacted in the church of Hagia Sophia, or Holy ‎Wisdom. Matins were already in progress when the berserk conquerors were heard ‎approaching. Immediately the great bronze doors were closed; but the Turks smashed ‎their way in. The poorer and more unattractive of the congregation were massacred on the ‎spot; the remainder were lashed together and led off to the Turkish camps, for the captors ‎to do with as they liked. As for the officiating priests, they continued with the Mass as ‎long as they could before being killed at the high altar; but there are among the Orthodox ‎faithful those who still believe that at the last moment one or two of them gathered up the ‎most precious of the patens and chalices and mysteriously disappeared into the southern ‎wall of the sanctuary. There they will remain until the day Constantinople becomes a ‎Christian city once again, when they will resume the liturgy at the point at which it was ‎interrupted." (Norwich, "Byzantium: The Decline and Fall," Knopf, 1995, p. 436)‎

**Istanbul**  
The Turks renamed their city, but it never stuck. Constantinople was forever and always ‎‎"the city," and men spoke of going "to the city" – _eis ten polin_, in Greek. This became ‎corrupted so that "to the city" became in time the name of the great city itself: _ees tin pol_, ‎or Is-tan-bul.‎

The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1453 to 1921, though it spent its last hundred years or ‎so in such decline that it was known as "The Sick Man if Europe." The Ottomans ruled an ‎area almost exactly equal to the eastern half of the Roman Empire, stretching from the ‎northern Balkans to northern Africa. The last Ottoman emperors made the mistake of ‎siding with the Axis powers in the first World War, and according to the terms of the ‎Treaty of Sevres, the empire was dismembered and placed under British control. While its ‎empire was parceled out between the British and the French, Turkey itself was re-taken ‎by a charismatic young general, Kemal Ataturk, who dragged his countrymen kicking and ‎screaming into the modern world. He dragged many other people kicking and screaming ‎to annihilation, being responsible for the genocide of millions of Armenians and for the ‎final eradication of the ancient Greek communities along the coast, most notably in ‎Smyrna and Ephesus.‎

The British Museum did indeed quietly seize the opportunity to transfer many priceless ‎ancient treasures to its holdings in the name of protection from civil unrest. I am ‎speculating that Albus Dumbledore accompanied the British diplomats in Turkey as a ‎liaison from the wizarding world. I am further speculating that no matter his age, ‎Dumbledore might have appeared no more than middle-aged in the early twentieth ‎century, and that he might have had an eye for handsome warm-skinned young Turks.‎


End file.
